Homeschooling:
Math
CAN BE Interesting AND Delightful!
A Charlotte Mason (Learning by Doing)
Approach to Math
by Cindy Rushton
Math need not be dull and lifeless!
It can actually be challenging, interesting, delightful and EASY! Here
are some tips for making math more interesting and fun…
* Focus
on EACH Individual Child.
EVERY skill that is learned is actually learned, as a process not based
upon their age or grade-level! Take it easy learning Math step by step,
little by little!
* Keep
Math in its place!
Math Lessons need not take a large amount of time each day. Daily
lessons should not take more than 15 minutes to teach up to grades 4-5.
These short lessons will train the children to give their entire
attention to the study, instill the habit of concentration, challenge
their daily mental effort, encourage clear thinking and rapid, careful
execution, and develop their reasoning powers. This will prepare them
for the gradual increase in daily lessons as they get older. For older
students, all that is needed for the study of Math is around 30 minutes
a day for 5-12 grades! Math should never dominate studies to the
elimination of other areas of study!
* Scrap
texts when you can teach naturally!
Any time you are teaching measurement, reasoning, time, simple sums,
etc…try to teach through REAL LIFE! It will be easier to teach AND to
learn!
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“On the same principle, let him learn ‘weights and measures’ by
measuring and weighing; let him have scales and weights, sand or rice,
paper or twine, and weigh, and do up, in perfectly made parcels,
ounces, pounds, etc. The parcels, though they are not arithmetic, are
educative, and afford considerable exercise of judgment as well as of
neatness, deftness, and quickness. In like manner, let him work with
foot-rule and yard measure, and draw up tables for himself. Let him not
only measure and weigh everything about him that admits of such
treatment, but let him use his judgment on questions of measure and
weight. How many yards long is the tablecloth? How many feet long and
broad a map, or picture? What does he suppose a book weighs that is to
go by parcel post? The sort of readiness to be gained thus is valuable
in the affairs of life, and, if only for that reason, should be
cultivated in the child. While engaged in measuring and weighing
concrete quantities, the scholar is prepared to take in his first idea
of a ‘fraction,’ half a pound, a quarter of a yard, etc.”
Charlotte Mason, page 259-260 Home Education
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* Present
ONE difficulty at a time!
One thing that we have tried to do with our children is slow down to
teach concepts bit by bit, little by little! The fruit of this approach
is comprehension and deep understanding. You can use ANY curriculum
with this approach. Most curriculum is written with new principles
introduced, followed by lots of practice. Take more time on the
concepts of the new principle being introduced. IF the child
understands the concepts, let them move on. IF NOT, then let them take
more time on the concept and work through more of the practice
problems. This works! It did for Charlotte Mason as well…
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“Engage the child upon little problems within his comprehension
from the first, rather than upon set sums. The young governess delights
to set a noble ‘long-division sum,’—953,783,465 ¸ 873—which shall
fill
the child’s slate, and keep him occupied for a good half-hour; and when
it is finished, and the child is finished too, done up with the
unprofitable labour, the sum is not right after all: the two last
figures in the quotient are wrong and the remainder is false. But he
cannot do it again—he must not be discouraged by being told it is
wrong; so, ‘nearly right’ is the verdict, a judgment inadmissible in
arithmetic. Instead of this laborious task, which gives no scope for
mental effort, and in which he goes to seas at last from sheer want of
attention, say to him—‘Mr. Jones sent six hundred and seven, Mr.
Stevens eight hundred and nineteen, apples to be divided amongst the
twenty-seven boys at school on Monday. How many apples apiece did they
get?’ Here he must ask himself certain questions. ‘How many apples
altogether? How shall I find out? Then I must divide the apples into
twenty-seven heaps to find out each boy’s share.’ That is to say, the
child perceives what rules he must apply to get the required
information. He is interested; the work goes on briskly: the sum is
done in no time, and is probably right, because the attention of the
child is concentrated on his work. Care must be taken to give the child
such problems as he can work, but yet, which are
not difficult enough to cause him some little mental effort.”
Charlotte Mason, page 254 Home Education
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* Give
them TIME to think, reason, and use their minds without boring them.
Thinking and reasoning will exercise their minds! They will develop the
powers of their minds. Miss Mason said,
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“Of all his early studies, perhaps none is more important to the
child as a means of education than that of arithmetic. That he should
do sums is of comparatively small importance; but the use of those
functions which ‘summing’ calls into play is a great part of
education…The practical value of arithmetic to persons in every class
of life goes without remark. But the use of the study in practical life
is the least of its uses. The chief value of arithmetic, like that of
higher mathematics, lies in the training it affords to the reasoning
powers, and in the habits of insight, readiness, accuracy, intellectual
truthfulness it engenders. There is no one subject in which good
teaching effects more, as there is none in which slovenly teaching has
more mischievous results.”
Charlotte Mason, page 254 Home Education
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* No
cramming! No testing!
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“The child, who has been allowed to think and not compelled to
cram, hails the new study with delight when the due time for it
arrives. The reason why mathematics are a great study is because there
exists in the normal mind an affinity and capacity for this study; and
too great an elaboration, whether of teaching or of preparation, has, I
think, a tendency to take the edge off this manner of intellectual
interest.” Charlotte Mason, page 264
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* Incorporate
narration!
As you are working through different operations whether in the early
stages with beans, buttons, etc OR as they get older and work with
abstract ideas, allow the child to explain the concepts or operations
through narration. Remember that whatever they take inside and make
their own, will STICK!
* Demonstrate
the concrete example before the abstract concepts!
Let them SEE the concepts being taught! Demonstrate with objects as
visual examples of numbers and operations…story problems to set up and
solve with different operations…real life-money, watches, measuring
tape, food, material, weight!
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“Demonstrate. —The next point is to demonstrate everything
demonstrable. The child may learn the multiplication table and do a
subtraction sum without any insight into the rationale of either. He
may even become a good arithmetician, applying rules aptly, without
seeing the reason of them; but arithmetic becomes elementary training
only in so far as the reason why of every process is clear to the
child. 2+2=4, is a self-evident fact, admitting of little
demonstration; but 4X 7=28 may be proved. He has a bag of beans; places
four rows with seven beans in a row; adds the rows, thus: 7 and 7 are
14, and 7 are 21, and 7 are 28; how many sevens are in 28? 4. Therefore
it is right to say 4X7=28; and the child sees that multiplication is
only a short way of doing addition…”
Charlotte Mason, page 255-256 Home Education
She continues, “A bag of
beans, counters,
or buttons should be used in all the early arithmetic lessons, and the
child should be able to work with these freely, and even to add,
subtract, multiply, and divide mentally, without the aid of buttons or
beans, before he is set to ‘do sums’ on his slate.”
“Dominoes, beans, graphic
figures
drawn on the blackboard, and the like, are, on the other hand, aids to
the child when it is necessary for him to conceive of a great number
with the material of a small one; but to see a symbol of the great
numbers and to work with such a symbol are quite different
matters…nothing can be more delightful than the careful analysis of
numbers and the beautiful graduation of the work,’only one difficulty
at a time being presented to the mind.’”
Charlotte Mason, page 262, Home Education
(Miss Mason continues on pages
256-264 with wonderful ideas for teaching the principles of
arithmetic…LOOK it up!)
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* Use
Visual Aids!
BUT let the children make them! Children will enjoy making their own
resources like Multiplication Tables or Hundred Charts. Not to mention,
they will probably learn more as they make it! My son, very bright in
the study of Math, really hit a HUGE snag when we got to
Multiplication. He understood the concept and could figure any problem
given, but simply could not memorize his multiplication tables to help
him with his speed. I was troubled for MONTHS before I came across the
idea of letting him make a multiplication chart to use with his
lessons. He never did learn his multiplication tables, but he can
figure in his mind any of the equations. This may be the answer to your
little ones too! AND it is OK!
* Use
songs to help remember facts that are difficult to remember!
Math facts will simply take time to learn. However, one tool that can
be used effectively and PAINLESSLY is music! Use either commercially
prepared tapes OR give the children their own tapes to creatively
produce their OWN songs!
* Play
LOTS of Games!
Children can easily and naturally learn Math through their play. Use
games to break up daily lessons, introduce new concepts, practice
skills, or to develop thinking skills. Games can be found at department
stores, school supply stores, OR you can MAKE your own! FUN and
INDIVIDUAL!
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“Let his arithmetic lesson be to the child a daily exercise in
clear thinking and rapid, careful execution, and his mental growth will
be as obvious as the sprouting of seedlings in the spring.” |
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Cindy Rushton is the wife of her very best friend, Harold Rushton, and
the mother of Matthew (18) and Elisabeth (15) who have always been
homeschooled. Cindy is the author of over 80 books, Bible studies and
homeschool resources. She edits and publishes two magazines, Time for
Tea and Homeschooling The Easy Way, as well as Scrap-A-Latte
Newsletter. Want to see more of her writing? See her website:
http://www.CindyRushton.com or
her blog:
http://www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/CindyRushton
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